Our View: Happy 100, Mother’s Day

Saturday

May 10, 2014 at 7:00 PM

A century ago, American Mother’s Day crusader and founder Anna Jarvis convinced President Woodrow Wilson to, with the stroke of pen, turn her brainchild into a national holiday, to be forever celebrated on the second Sunday in May. And so here we are again.

We’re not confident anything can be written about moms that hasn’t been already. Shakespeare weighed in — “Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee ...” — as did Aristotle, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Victor Hugo, Abraham Lincoln, James Joyce, Mark Twain, etc. Author Tenneva Jordan summed it up as well as anybody: “A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.” And journalist Mignon McLaughlin noted that “the only mothers it is safe to forget on Mother’s Day are the good ones.”

Safe or not, don’t forget your mother today. Suffice it to say, not a one of us would be here without ours, whether she’s eligible for canonization or not.

A little effort goes a long way for the person who tucked you in at night and told you “just one more story” even after she’d run out of them and needed sleep herself; who kissed the “ouchie” and hugged you even when you messed up; who loved you enough to not let you do whatever you wanted to in junior high; who still couldn’t resist taming that stubborn cowlick at your high school graduation; who was guarded about the new “friend” she met for the first time at the college commencement but kept her reservations to herself; who looked forward to dancing at your wedding; who down the road never said no to baby-sitting duties; who couldn’t stop buying toys at garage sales and went way overboard for the grandkids at Christmas; who liberally applied the suntan lotion and fretted about the high slide at the park; who endured ballgame bleachers despite the back pain; who always picked up the phone and even got Dad to talk; who figured out Skype even though she’s not into all that technology stuff; who treats you like you never left when you walk in the door.

In fact you don’t have to be a literary giant to let your mom know you appreciate her today, but we’ll give Edgar Allan Poe the last word, anyway: